The Vantage Point

March 14, 2010 by  

Social Zone Awareness For Personal and Organizational Change | RedShift Consulting and Coaching, Boston MA - mary wynne-wynter, change facilitator Established small business owners are conflicted about social business and the shift towards “pull” platforms. They try to move in the new direction but aren’t ready to let go of habitual practices.

They’re trying to grow and develop and at the same time protect and survive. They’ll go to great lengths to “sell” me on the rationalizations and justifications for their interruption-based sales and marketing tactics and their reporting-based internal systems, structures and procedures.

I’ve learned its impossible to convince anyone to shift his or her vantage point if that business owner doesn’t sense, is in denial about, or not not able to live up to, a new direction like social business. They’re just not there and can’t make “sense” of it. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lost causes.

We just have meet them where they are, let them fail and flail without judging them or jumping to unwanted conclusions on their behalf. “If you don’t act now it will be too late” is an example of one of those assumptions (and one that I’m prone to if I’m not vigilant).

Every client has a vantage point: their personal, or cultural, system of beliefs, competencies and desires. Professional service providers have two options:

  • Tell them what’s wrong with where they are and what it costs them.
  • Meet and accept them where they are if they’ll own it, present the corresponding opportunity and facilitate the shift to a new set of beliefs, competencies and desires.

I don’t know the right framework for the second option, but I know its not a plan.

Post to Twitter

Filed under: alignment, authenticity, direction, intention, self-awareness, shift, social business
Tagged:
Comments: None